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Thursday, June 26, 2014

THE OMNISCIENCE: Miles to Go and Do Not Go Gentle

I actually stumbled upon this quote on my AP English midyear exam. Thanks, English Department! I love you all, I really do.

I figured it was high time for another Omni excerpt, given that I've shared a disproportionately large amount of them at Runaway Tales. If you're anxious to read more of Omni, just head over here and take your pick of Omni-related stories.

So, without further ado, I present to you...

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

and

Do Not Go Gentle

The
world dissolved into a tangle of a forest, green everywhere—a pale
green, a natural green instead of the oversaturated colors that
always seemed to appear in simulations. Moss and fallen leaves
softened the bed of soil under her feet. Thorny brambles lay behind
the trees to her right, while ivy climbed up trunks on her left.
There was no marked path before her, yet her feet knew where to step,
as if it were muscle memory from a ballet dance she had learned as a
child. The Omni's physical projection moved behind her.

“The
woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” the voice murmured with an
exhale, “but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I
sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

A
pause. “Did you learn that from the poet's mind?”

The
Omni smiled. “We are
the poet's mind when we read and feel his words.”

They
walked through shadowy hollows and clearings so bright Lilah was
nearly blinded and just stumbled along. She soaked in the poem's
defiant yet vulnerable words and wondered at their meaning. Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Do
Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
One last surge against destruction, against oblivion.

After
a thought, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“Where
are we always going?”

“Death?”

“No.”
The Omni smiled fleetingly. “Resistance.”

“Though
wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because
their words had forked no lightning they

Do
not go gentle into that good night.”

Jack
Gallifrey's fingers flew across the keyboard, each letter grinding
against the next as flint grinds steel to set the word ablaze. He
didn't need to embellish them; the truth he was telling only needed a
few careful word choices to maximize its emotional potential. The
natural narrative of this world carried the rest.

Inara
read over his shoulder, picking out the words with traces of bias and
marking them for Jack to revise later. Of course, she thought with a
roll of her eyes, there was no information presented without bias.
But Jack was a master at making his messages subliminal when
revealing secret information, and his readers trusted him to be
objective.

Those
same readers who would be rioting in the streets after this was
published.

“Good
men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their
frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.”

“We
need to go and find her!”

“Beck-”

“She
might be dead!”

“We'll
all
be dead if we don't get to that control room and fix this,” Mark
said. “Our time is limited. We need to save as many people as we
can, and we can only do that if we stay calm.”

“How
can you? How be so screwing calm
about this?” Becca grabbed his shirt and forced him to face her.
“How?”

“Beck,
I'm not.
I'm scared.
But somebody
has to be the one to keep going. To support everyone when they're
falling apart.”

Becca's
eyes were wide in shock and her brows arched in the beginnings of
indignation. “You think I'm falling apart?” Her voice was
unusually quiet. “You think... you think I'm just as unstable as
when... it...
happened? That you need to protect the fragile little mental
patient?”

“Becca,
I just want t-”

“I'm
not a child, Mark! I'm not your damsel in goddamn distress!”

“Becca,
that's not what I meant!” The boy sighed. “I'm scared, and you're
scared, and I didn't want to worry you any more. Someone needs to be
calm, or at least pretend to be. That's the only way this is going to
work.”

Becca
bit her lip, then said, “Fine. I'll be the calm one this time.
We're going to look for Lilah on the way to the control room, but if
we don't find her, you stay there and do the programming and I'll
search the back tunnels so we can get her out.”

Mark
gave her a half-smile. “You're good at pretending to be calm.”

Becca
grinned. “Learned from a master.”

“Wild
men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And
learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do
not go gentle into that good night.”

The
Mastermind poured corrupted code into the self-defense program of the
Machine, fending off the government's men with ease—Owon had hired
some competent hackers, but certainly not geniuses, making the
rebels' task significantly easier. A beeping alert drew his attention
to his inbox. Jack had posted the story of the girl the Omni had
killed—Delia Day, from Lorington County. Apparently the young lady
had gotten a marriage license—she had been with child. Her fiancé
was devastated.

“Boss?”
William called from behind him. “We checked the room. Mark, the
girlfriend, and Anna's sister are gone. And Anna won't come back
without her sister.”

The
Mastermind swore. “Not now. Not when we're so close to Dies Irae.
If they don't get out in time...”

“Worried
about Mark?” The boy could not help but grit his teeth. “Finally
worrying about one of these kids' safety?”

The
man whirled around, taking off his darkened glasses to glare with
fury at William. “Find them. Now.”

Grave
men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind
eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.

“You're
going to rage, rage against the dying of the light?” Lilah blinked
several times. “Are you dying? Can
you even die?”

The
Omni paused. “It's complicated. Incredibly so. For years, hackers
have been filling me up with damaged code. Sometimes it's hard to
tell whether an attack on you teens is coming from their code or from
the warp form my own defensive system has taken to fight them. The
two have been dangerously muddled together. If I don't transfer
myself somewhere outside of a computer matrix, I'll be completely
corrupted within hours.”

The
voice. They voice was unusually calm, given that it was speaking of
its own impending destruction. Almost if it had already found a
solution, some way out. Somewhere to transfer...